Home cooked

 Well, this is an interesting development. And I'm not talking "interesting" in a "It's interesting how the Boston Celtics shot 3-pointers last night the way Columbus discovered America" kind of way.

Well, OK. So maybe I am.

Maybe I am, because like Columbus got credit for discovering America even though he just blindly ran into an island a thousand miles away, the Celtics missed their target by about a thousand miles, too. Got up 60 attempts from the arc last night in Boston -- a ton even for a team as s shamelessly promiscuous from that locale as the C's -- and missed, um, 45 of them.

Fifteen-for-60, boys and girls. You could blindfold an 8-year-old, spin him around five times and point him in the wrong direction, and he'd still make at least 16.

Anyway, the Celtics foray to Brick City opened the door for the New York Knicks to steal Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals on the Celtics' home floor, which is the interesting part of all this. You see, three conference semifinal series began in Boston, Cleveland and Oklahoma City in the last two days -- and the visitors won every Game 1.

Home cookin', meet home cooked.

First up, on Sunday, the Indiana Pacers racehorsed the East 1-seed Cavaliers into the floorboards, 121-112. Then, last night, the Knicks dispatched the Celts in overtime after being down 20 at one point, and the Denver Nuggets shocked the West 1-seed Thunder thanks to Nikola Jokic's monster 42-point, 22-rebound night and Aaron Gordon's game-winning three.

The Thunder were a league-best 68-14 in the regular season, including 35-6 at home. The Cavs were 64-18 and 34-7 in C-town. And the Celtics won 61 games including 28 on the home parquet.

So what does this mean, exactly?

Maybe something. Probably nothing.

Momentum, after all, is a chimera in sports, and in the NBA in particular. So look for the Cavaliers to wash the Pacers in Game 2, and the Celtics to bottom eleventy gazillion 3s and blow the Knicks into the Charles River, and the Thunder to hold Jokic to something reasonably sane -- say, 35 points and 17 boards, perhaps -- and even that series. And we'll be right back where we started before Game 1.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, the Pacers, Knicks and Nuggets could rise up again. And then all of this would get really interesting.

Onward.

An open-book test

 This isn't Scottie Scheffler's fault. Let's get that out there right off the hop.

It is not Scottie Scheffler's fault, nor Erik van Rooyen's, nor any of the other golfers who turned the TPC Craig Ranch course in McKinney, Tex., into TPC Chalk Outline over the weekend. And it's not TPC Craig Ranch's fault, either, although the groundskeepers might think about installing a few windmill holes to gin things up for the next visit by the PGA boys.

You say Scheffler was a ridiculous minus-31 over 72 holes to run away with the CJ Cup Byron Nelson over the weekend?

Yeah, well, let's see him put up that kind of baroque number when he has to drop a gap wedge into the clown's mouth on No. 17. Or something like that.

Instead, the Byron Nelson was just normal golf on a normal course. And it says here that's a problem, or at least perhaps is becoming one.

The players, see, have become so good, and their weaponry so advanced, that your average Greater Velveeta Open track increasingly has become an open-book test for them. St. Andrews or Turnberry when the gales blow still can put up a decent fight, as can the usual  tricked-up U.S. Open course. But when the weather's right and it's Whispering Drought Golf Club that awaits ...

Well. Then it's no fight at all. Then it's the CJ Cup Byron Nelson.

In which Scheffler, as noted, finished 31-under and won by eight strokes. Van Rooyen was second at 23-under. Sam Stephens was another three shots back at 20-under. On Sunday, 11 golfers shot 65 or better; across four days, Scheffler put up rounds of 61, 63, 66 and 63.

And while his 253 total tied a PGA record, it wasn't particularly an anomaly. Earlier this season, Hideki Matsuyama shot 35-under on the par-73 Plantation Course in Hawaii.

This does not, of course, imply that golf is becoming far too easy. It's not. It's still, as a friend once called it, an evil game that will grab Bud Light Joe's Titleist when  heleast expects it and deposit somewhere in Outer Mongolia. Also, Bud Light Joe is no Matsuyama or Scheffler; both are terrific players, Scheffler is the best player in the world right now.

 He's also a native Texan who, when he was 6-years-old, got his picture taken with Byron Nelson himself. So this was special for him.

Not so much for TPC Craig Ranch, however. 

Which perhaps really does need a few windmills and clown mouths to slow these guys down.  Or maybe, considering the tournament's namesake, institute a new rule for next year.

Make 'em play with ol' Byron's clubs. That'll fix 'em.

Done like ...

 ... wait, what?

What do you mean "NOT like dinner"?

What do you mean "Over? Over? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"?

What do you mean "Omigod, Winnipeg just did the most un-Winnipeg thing ever!"?

It is an article of Blob faith that the tussle for Lord Stanley's Cup is the best of all playoffs, and over the weekend the Winnipeg Jets and a guy named Mikko Rantanen offered the latest testimony for the defense.

On Saturday, Rantanen scored four points in the last 12 minutes -- a hat trick and an assist -- to rescue the Dallas Stars in Game 7 against Colorado, his former team. The Stars trailed 2-0 until Mikko started putting biscuits in baskets.

But hold on, folks! There's more!

Because then came Sunday, and here were the Jets, the best team in the league during the regular season, doing what they're best at. Which is gagging  like a cat with a hairball in the playoffs.

And, brother, they were gaggin' like champeens this time around.

 After winning the first two games of the series against St. Louis, which got into the playoffs with practically its last breath, they were down 2-0 at home to the Blues in Game 7 at home. And it was still 3-2 St. Loo as the final seconds drained away.

"Dammit!" the home fans were no doubt baying.

(Also, "Typical!")

(Also, as night follows day, "Bleeping bleeper-bleep Jets!")

And then ...

And then, as the clock got down to five seconds, Kyle Connor cranked off a desperation one-timer. Think a Hail Mary pass into a crowded end zone in football or a no-hope court-length fling in basketball, and you've got the equivalent.

Except ...

Except down in front of the St. Louis goal Cole Perfetti was hanging around, and somehow he got his stick on the puck. Re-directed Connor's shot. With three seconds left it got behind Jordan Binnington, and the score was tied. By the very thinnest of margins, the Jets were somehow still alive.

A pile of tense minutes later -- not quite 34, to be exact -- Adam Lowry scored in the second overtime, and the Jets had avoided their latest embarrassing playoff flameout in a many-volume set. The final was 4-3, Winnipeg and not St. Louis was off to the second round, and the Winnipeg fans were still baying "Bleeping bleeper-bleep Jets!"

Because that's what you say when your bleeping team damn near gives you a bleeping heart attack.

After which, of course, you might also say "The Stanley Cup playoffs are perfect." Because you know what happens now?

In the second round, the Jets play the Stars. 

May the best team not almost lose before winning.

Derby 1. Journalism 0.

 Ah, what the hell. I never liked lousy weather, either.

I was never a big fan of standing on a squishy sideline while a bunch of earnest high school kids churned 100 yards of turf into mud lasagna. And then wading through the mud lasagna trying not to ruin my pricey sportswriter sneaks, which were actually off-brand knockoffs I got for 29 bucks at If You Shoes You Lose.

In other words, I feel Journalism's pain.

The 3-1 fave in the Kentucky Derby got a late start and splashed home second in the 151st running, on a day when the winner, Sovereignty, more properly should have been named "Duck!" or "Don't Forget To Duck" or something similarly aquatic-fowl-related.

It rained, in other words. And the track was officially designated as "sloppy." Which was another way of saying it was mud lasagna, or perhaps "a front-line trench at Ypres in 1917."

So not only did Journalism come up short, it got a goop bath on top of it.

This of course is what every scribe with a press card in his or her hatband should have expected, as familiar as we all are with such indignities. We all have our figurative goop bath stories, it seems -- and, no, I'm not talking about Fearless Leader getting all butt-hurt because someone dared to commit  journalism on him, and threatening to shut the offender down like every other tinpot schmuck who ever entertained delusions of godhood.

No, sir. The goop stories I refer to are far more everyday.

There was that time, for instance, when we had to climb a fence to get out of a high school football stadium because everyone forgot we were there. Or all the times we waited out some coach or athlete who was operating on Sundial Time.  Or every championship Monday night at the NCAA Tournament,  when our deadlines would press us to death like a New England witch because Big TV refused to tip the game until almost 9:30 p.m.

Not that we're bitter or anything. 

In any event, Journalism came up short, and only paid $7.50 to place on top of it.  So Journalism was a chintzy bet, too. Something else we all could have predicted.

Which brings me to my Derby joke for this May, humor often being journalism's (or, Journalism's) fallback defense.

See, in addition to Journalism, there was a horse named Publisher in the perpetually overcrowded Derby field. Publisher turned out to be a four-legged meatloaf, finishing 32 1/4 lengths behind the winner in 14th place. But considering how gumption-free some publishers are these days in backing their journalists' play, I figure Publisher at least made a timely punchline:

Q: Why did Journalism fail to win the Derby?

A: Because Publisher wouldn't let him.

Well. I think it's funny.

Uh-oh time in Winnipeg

 You can say a lot of things about Lord Stanley, whose name adorns an iconic Cup, but mostly you can say this: When winter's snows retreat and the world greens up, he does get up to some shenanigans.

Remember a couple of weekends ago, when the Blob noted that the Winnipeg Jets were entering Lord Stanley's playoffs with the NHL's best regular-season record (56-22-4, the best goal differential (plus-86) and the league's best goaltender (Connor Hellebuyck)?

Remember how I noted all of this boded ill for the Jets, because the best regular-season team hasn't won Stanley in 17 years? And how it especially boded ill for the Jets -- who are 0-for-53 lifetime in Stanley Cups, and who've never so much as reached a Final in all that time? 

"Sorry," you're saying now. "I don't remember any of that."

Well ... too bad. 'Cause I said it.

Of course, then the Jets went out and won the first two games of their first-round series against the St. Louis Blues, and, OK, so maybe I was wrong this time. The Blues, after all, had made the playoffs at, like, the last second. So maybe this would be the rout it looked to be on paper.

But hold your horses there, bucko!

The series shifted to St. Louis, and suddenly the best goaltender in the league turned into Sieve-y McSieveface. The Blues chased him in a 7-2 romp in Game 3, then chased him again in a 5-1 fanny-warming in Game 4. The Jets briefly righted the ship by winning 5-3 at home in Game 5, but then ...

Then came Game 6 ast night, back in St. Louis.

In which Hellebuyck gave up four goals in five minutes and was pulled again, for the third time in the series.

In which the Blues went to win 5-2, and now it's back to Winnipeg for ... OMIGOD WE HAD THESE CHUMPS DOWN 2-0 AND NOW IT'S A GAME 7!

Sorry. The Winnipeg fan base sorta took control of that sentence there.

One would assume that's what Jets fans are thinking right now, having seen this movie too many times before. I mean, they've said "What the hell just happened?" so often it should be on Winnipeg's city seal. And now they're saying it again, along with "Uh-oh", Where did Helly go and who's that wearing his goalie gear?", and also "Omigod we had these chumps down 2-0 and now it's Game 7!"

Because you can't repeat the latter too often at this point.

The good news for the Jets is they're back home, where they haven't lost to the Blues yet and where Hellebuyck's goals-against in three games is a more Hellebuyck-like 2.3. His teammates, meanwhile, have backed their beleaguered stopper with 12 goals in three games. 

So there's still hope for the form chart, I guess.

Except somewhere, I suspect, Lord Stanley just smirked.

"Hullo, lads!' he exclaims. "Watch this!"

Derby time!

 ... in which the Blob forgoes its usual extolling of the Twin Spires ("Two of 'em!"), Kentucky colonels and women in Frank Lloyd Wright hats.

(Also mint juleps, which ain't nothin' but jumped-up Robitusson.)

(Also that one song by Dan Fogelberg, "Run for the Roses".)

No, this year I'm concerned with only one thing: The winner of tomorrow's 151st Derby.

Who, it says here, will be a handsome lad named Journalism, on account of his name's "Journalism" and he's the 7-2 favorite by the morning line.

Come on. You think a former sportswriter was gonna pick anyone else?

Of course he's not. I mean, I'm not.

Now, I suppose I could also put my precious two bucks down on Publisher, a 28-1 shot coming out of the 13 hole. Publisher's sire is Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, so he's got that going for him.

But, nah. I'm stickin' with Journalism, having never been a Publisher.

(You might be asking here why there are two horses in this field named for an industry we're constantly being taught to despise. First of all, Journalism, when done right, remains a noble profession that serves a vital purpose in any free society, which is why those out to dismantle free societies are so intent on us despising it. And Publishers are a vital cog, too, except when they're lily-livered suck-ups in thrall to the free-society-dismantlers.)

Now, where was I?

Oh, yeah. Journalism. The Derby. Your odds-on favorite.

He's one smokin' hot horse coming to Churchill Downs, and I'm not saying that because his withers are perfect, to paraphrase Warren Zevon. I'm saying that because he comes to the Derby on a four-race winning streak, including both his starts this year. Also he drew the No. 8 post position, which has produced nine Derby winners, second only to the No. 10 position. Mage won from the No. 8 hole just two years ago.

Mage ... who was, um, a 15-1 underdog.

And here's where it gets a trifle sticky for my Derby pick.

The betting favorite, see, hasn't won the Derby since 2018. In the six Derbys since, the winner has been a 65-1 shot (Country House, 2019); an 8-1 pick (Authentic, 2020); a 26-1 pick (Mandoulin, 2021); an 80-1 shot (Rich Strike, 2022); Mage; and, last year, Mystik Dan, who went off at 18-1.

The favorite, Fierceness, finished 15th.

Needless to say, this is not a trend a man who wants to see when he's putting his hard-earned two simoleons on the favorite's nose.

Therefore, as a backup, I'm casting about for some gluepot poised to turn into Secretariat. Remember the name, Blobophiles: Flying Mohawk.

He comes out of gate 11 tomorrow, and he's carrying 33-1 odds right now. That's not what caught my eye, however. What caught my eye is his trainer.

Who is D. Whitworth Beckman, a properly aristocratic trainer name if ever there was one. D. Whitworth Beckman! You just knows he smokes a briar pipe, enjoys an after-dinner sherry and has a wardrobe over-served with tweed. And I'd bet long green right now the "D" stands for Declan or Dorian or Demetrius or some such thing.

(Annoying Accuracy Interlude: It doesn't. It stands for "David." Also, Beckman was born in Louisville, not Stratford-On-Avon, and everyone calls him "Whit". So much for that fantasy.)

Anyway ...

Anyway, if you're looking for a longshot pick, Flying Mohawk's your boy. Me, I'm stickin' with Journalism, despite any and all qualms.

In my scenario, Journalism nips Publisher by a nose at the wire. Call it a victory for the working stiffs over the oligarchs.

Speaking of fantasies.

The Lake (No)Show

 So I'm looking at the NBA scores this morning, and I'm thinking "This is why the Lakers traded for Luka Doncic," because the L Boys, Luka and LeBron, just completely destroyed  poor Minnesota in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Beat 'em in five, like everyone predicted. Woodshedded 'em. Disposed of 'em, and now it's on to the second rou--

Wait, what?

Whatta you mean they didn't do any of that?

Whatta you mean it was poor Minnesota who woodshedded them? Who disposed of them? Didn't you hear about The Trade? Didn't you hear about the Lakers-in-five prediction from the smart guys, the gurus, the People Who Know Basketball Way Better Than You Do, So Just Shut Up And Listen Already?

Were you not paying attention to Vegas, which had the Luka/LeBron Lake Show the third betting favorite to win it all?

And now it's May 1 and the third betting favorite is already cleaning out its lockers? Is there no order in the world anymore?

(Obvious answer: No)

Well, that's just great. All that hype, and it's Minnesota who wins in five. Who got 27 points and 24 rebounds from Rudy Gobert last night as the Timberwolves closed it out. Rudy Gobert, for God's sake. Like he was Wilt or Shaq or Kareem and not, you know, Rudy Gobert.

Here's the worst part for Luka 'n' LeBron 'n' them: The Wolves not only beat them, they beat them while not even doing what they do best. In fact they were really, really bad at what they do best.

That would be shooting the 3-ball, at which Minnesota Timberwolves were one of the best teams in the NBA this season. Not last night, though. Last night, they were the Brick City Timberwolves.

Some numbers: In Game 5, Minny fired up 47 attempts from beyond the arc. They missed 40 of them. That was a pathetic 14.9 percent clip, the worst 3-point percentage in a playoff game in NBA history. At one point they missed 18 straight attempt; Anthony Edwards, the Timberwolves superstar guard, was 0-for-11 from the arc.

And still they won by seven, 103-96, on the Lakers' home floor.

Luka and LeBron did their part, combining for 50 points, 14 rebounds and 15 assists. And it's not like they didn't step up their respective games in the playoffs; Luka averaged 30.2 points against the Timberwolves, two above his season average, and LeBron averaged 25.4, one above his season average. Luka also averaged 7.0 rebounds and 5.8 assists, while LeBron average 9.0 boards and 5.6 assists.

And still they lost.

Got smoked by 22 in Game 1 at home, won Game 2, then lost the last three. Which means now all we have to watch are Oklahoma City and Cleveland and the Knicks and the Celtics and the Pacers, and maybe Steph and the Warriors. Gee whiz.

It also means something else.

I'm no longer saying "This is why the Lakers traded for Luka Doncic."

Now I'm saying this: "Well, THAT didn't work."

Today in parental supervision

 I wouldn't want to be the son of Atlanta Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich right now. I bet the kid's been grounded for infinity.

"And no sugary snacks, either!" Ulbrich reportedly said.

OK. Sooo, that's probably not how this all went down.

If you haven't heard, Ulbrich's kid did an epically boneheaded kid thing last week: It seems he made a prank call to Shedeur Sanders' private number as Sanders free-fell during the NFL Draft. Now the NFL has smacked the Falcons with a $250,000 fine, and lightened Jeff Ulbrich's wallet by $100,000 on top of it, for leaking "confidential information" -- i.e., Sanders' number.

Hoo, boy. I'm trying to imagine how my dad would have reacted (or your dad, or anyone's dad) if I not only did something childish and stupid, but so childish and stupid it cost my dad 100K and my dad's place of business 250K. The imagining is not pleasant.

"You did WHAT??" would probably be the first words out of Dad's mouth.

The conversation likely would have slalomed downhill from there, in the process becoming more and more one-sided.

In my head, it plays out like that scene from "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" in which Dr. Evil repeatedly shushes his son Scott. And, OK, so that's probably not how that went down, either.

But I bet it's not far off.

I'm betting, in fact, it might have gone -- might have gone -- kinda-sorta like this:

"You did WHAT??"

"I, um ... I ... well, I swiped Shedeur Sanders' private number from you and prank-called him, pretending to be a team executive who'd just drafted him."

"You did WHAT??"

"I swiped Shedeur Sanders' ...

"I heard you the first time. Good God, why in the name of all that's holy, and several things that aren't, would you do such a boneheaded thing?"

"I dunno. I thought it would be funny."

"FUNNY?! First of all, it's cruel, not funny. I mean, really cruel. What did Shedeur Sanders ever do to you? And didn't your mother and I raise you better?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"You GUESS so??"

"I mean, yeah, you did. And I'm sorry. Like, really-really-reeeeally sorry. And I'll pay you back the 100K, no matter how long it takes. And if you get demoted or lose your job because of this, I'll work two or three or four jobs to make up the difference."

"Even if we wind up in Cleveland?"

"Even if we wind up in Cleveland."

"Fine. But pray tell, what are you going to do? That fry cook gig at Happy Burger ain't gonna get it done."

"So I'll get another fry cook job at Lickin' Chicken. And maybe one at that Australian/Tex-Mex fusion place, Burritos On The Barbie. And also ..."

The kid stops.

"Also what?"

"Well ... also, the phone store is hiring. And I hear they pay pretty well."

Eclipsed

 You gotta feel for the Chicago White Sox these days. It's the last day of April, they're aromatically challenged again, and yet try as they might they can't achieve the epoch-spanning notoriety of last spring and summer.

(And, no, this is not intended to be another episode of the Blob's long-running "Cruds Alert!" feature. Although I suppose it could be. Technically.)

Anyway, the What Sox are stumbling along like a drunk trying to negotiate a staircase, but it's not the same. Last year, the nation was riveted to their pursuit of historic ineptness; so far this year, even though they're 7-22 and the worst team in the American League by four games -- and already 10.5 games out of first in the so-so AL Central -- they're just another bunch of dreary cruds.  

That's because the Colorado Rockheads, nee Rockies, have stolen their thunder.

Or their lack of thunder. Or their history-ness. Or something.

The Rockheads, see, have now lost eight games in a row, and are 4-25, four games worse than even the What Sox. With May still waiting in the wings, they're already 15.5 games out of first in the NL West and a staggering 11 games out of next-to-last. They're both a terrible road team and a terrible home team, with a 1-14 record in the former and a 3-11 record in the latter. 

How bad are they?

They're so bad, through 29 games, that right now they're on pace to lose 136 games in 2025. That would obliterate the What Sox' year-old modern record of 121 losses by a whopping 15.

Which means the What Sox would wind up being even bigger losers than they already are.

I mean, one season in history's sun, and then they're eclipsed?

Now that's an L writ large.

History defiled

 Listen, what Micah Beckwith knows about American history you could pour in a shot glass and still have room for the shot. Not to state the obvious or anyth-

I'm sorry?

Yeah, OK, so I forgot my standard disclaimer when the Blob escapes the Sportsball pasture. Fine, here's the Cliff Notes version, then: Hall pass. Library. Goest thou with God.

Satisfied?

Good. Now, where was I?

Right, Micah Beckwith, our knotheaded Lute Guv and erstwhile white nationalist preachin' man.  In his quest to pave over American history, he called the founders' Three-Fifths Compromise a smooth move the other day, which landed him on the national news and exposed him to most thinking humans as just another Indiana hayseed out to bring back the good old days of the Klan 1920s.

That is perhaps unfair. But not by a lot.

The Lute Guv's crusade to eradicate the woke/DEI/Critical Race Theory virus he claims is indoctrinating our vulnerable youth misses the obvious irony, which is that he's the one doing the indoctrinating. What he calls revisionist history is actually corrective history; revisionism (not to say deliberate distortion) is what he's up to, along with his brethren in the current Regime.

One example, among many others: The removal of several items from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African-American History and Culture, part of the Regime's order to the Smithsonian to erase what it calls "improper, divisive or anti-American" ideology from its museums.

"Improper, divisive or anti-American" apparently meaning "anything that mentions slavery too much (or at all!), or the struggle for civil rights (a chapter in American history that happened a long time ago and is therefore irrelevant these days!), or  race except in approved kumbaya terms."

In an NBA News piece by Catalina Perez de Arminan, this particular Sovietization of American history included the return of a couple of items donated by civil rights activist Rev. Amos Brown. One was an African-American history written by Rev. George Washington Williams in 1880. The other was a bible carried by Rev. Brown in demonstrations alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson. 

Apparently the latter in particular would be too remindful of the civil rights era that was, remember, a long time ago and best forgotten. (Plus it unavoidably cast certain white folk in an exceedingly poor light. Thus it's improper, divisive ... you know the drill).

In rebuttal, I surrender the wheel to the editorial board of my former employer, The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, which took Beckwith to task this morning far more eloquently than I ever could. I will not quote the entire piece; the final two sentences nails the current defiling of our history by Beckwith et al quite adequately:

What Beckwith fears is accountability. And until this country stops lying about what was done in its name, it remains chained to the rot it refuses to name.

Bingo.

Title IX bugaloo

 Three months and fourscore goofiness along, the Regime of Fearless Leader Donald John "Legbreaker" Trump  has revealed to us a few home truths.

One, institutional knowledge and expertise will get you nowhere. And by "nowhere", I mean, "Any yokel can do your job, and we're just the yokels to do it."

Two, batshite crazy is the new normal. And by "batshite crazy", I mostly mean "Brain Worm Bobby Kennedy", though are plenty of other examples. 

Three, the Regime ain't bad at gymnastics.

And by "gymnastics," I mean, "Standing existing civil rights law on its head."

That's exactly what's going on these days with Title IX, which was introduced to ensure women equal access to athletic opportunities but is now being used by the Regime as a weapon in its weird jihad against transgender Americans. Yes, that's right, folks: A law designed to combat discrimination now functions as an instrument for discrimination.

Comes now the news that the Regime is using Title IX to blackjack the University of Pennsylvania into prostrating itself for the crime of allowing a trans swimmer, Lia Thomas, to compete. The Regime's Department of Education is giving Penn 10 days to cast Thomas into outer darkness, issue a statement saying it will comply with Title IX and apologize to each female swimmer  for "allowing her educational experience in athletics to be marred by sex discrimination."

And Georgie Patton thought apologizing for slapping that soldier in Sicily was hard duty.

In truth, as with most doings of the Regime, this Title IX bugaloo is complete eyewash. First of all, allowing one trans swimmer to compete can hardly be described as rampant sex discrimination that deprives women athletes of their "educational experience in athletics." To claim as much is so over the top it makes you wonder how any serious person could keep a straight face while doing so.

(The obvious caveat: This is the Regime we're dealing with here. Serious persons were run off awhile ago)

All of this, of course, is born of the Regime's fetish for solutions in search of a problem. The dirty not-so-secret secret -- and how many times do we have to go over this? -- is transgender athletes are such a rarity they in no way constitute the assault on women's sports the Regime suggests by invoking Title IX against them. In fact, states that allow transgender athletes have a higher rate of biological girls participating in sports than those that don't.

And yet, you still hear, from the wilder precincts of the extremist right, the refrain that unless the Regime bends universities and state governments to its will, hordes of transgenders will completely "take over" girls and women's sports. That a lot of the people saying this didn't give a tinker's damn about girls and women's sports until they became a useful bludgeon against those creepy transgenders hardly needs saying. 

That it's utterly absurd is just as obvious. It's like turning back the clock 40 or so years and saying tennis player Renee Richards -- one of the first notable trans athletes -- was going to run Chrissie and Martina right out of the game if she was allowed to play.

Didn't happen, of course. Just as Penn allowing Lia Thomas to compete didn't, nor in any rational world could, threaten women swimmers.

The key phrase there being, "in any rational world." Which is most assuredly not this one.

Today in jackwagons

Hey, I'll give a guy some rope on occasion. The Blob does stuff like that, despite all those ugly rumors to the contrary.

And so here's what I'll say about the fan in Cleveland who taunted Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran over the weekend: Maybe he was just having a bad day.

Maybe he was torqued at the way Duran was raking Guardians' pitching. Maybe he was mad because the Red Sox were making a 13-3 bonfire out of his baseball team. Or maybe he suddenly realized he lived in Cleveland.

Whatever. In any case, I can understand why he shouted "something inappropriate" at Duran, in Duran's words. I totally get how frustration might make him taunt Duran about his attempted suicide three years ago, with which Duran bravely went public during the recent Netflix doc "The Clubhouse: A Year With The Red Sox."  Hey, everybody's hu-

Ah, to heck with it. I can't pull this off.

I can't plant my tongue that deeply in my cheek, and I've been known to plant it pretty deep. So I'll dispense with the attempt to do so, and just say this: That guy in Cleveland is a jackwagon.

Like, a platinum-grade jackwagon. Like, the kind of jackwagon who still wears a Chief Wahoo cap and a Joe Charbonneau jersey stained with mustard, and who drinks 47 beers  and says "They'll always be the Indians to me!" and then passes out in the street in front of Jacobs Field or Progressive Insurance Base-ball Grounds or whatever they're calling the Guardians' home park these days.

That kind of jackwagon.

Anyway, he said what he said, and Duran, to his credit, didn't go into the stands to turn his head into a ground-rule double. Instead he just stared at the guy, and then the guy took off up the steps with security in hot pursuit. Caught easily, he was ejected from the premises and hopefully will be barred for all eternity from ever again stepping foot in said premises.

Look. As a friend of mine frequently likes to say, "Fans are a**holes." And they are. Or at least some of them are. And what's fascinating about that -- to me, anyway -- is how often the biggest a**holes are the ones in the high-dollar seats above the dugouts or courtside or in the lower bowl at center ice.

Now, I could say that's because the fans in the high-dollar seats think having sackfuls of money means they have more brains and talent than the average bear, and thus they're entitled to say or do anything they like. But that's probably an over-generalization, and it's unfair to those who actually have more brains and talent than the average bear. Because they're usually not the a**holes.

That's reserved for fans like the guy in Cleveland. 

Who clearly stepped waaaay over the line of acceptable fan taunting, as ill-defined as that line often is. Generally, though, it's OK to tell an opposing player he couldn't hit a beachball, or to make fun of his looks ("Flaps down!" you might hear, when a player with unfortunately-sized ears comes to the plate), or to torment him when he shows up on the mound without his best stuff ("Nice arm, Johnson! Is it linguine or penne?").

But when you start in on someone's mother or wife or girlfriend or sister, then you're edging toward jackwagon country. And in a time when mental health is finally getting the attention it deserves, taunting a guy courageous enough to publicly address his own mental health struggles suggests you ought to be in a zoo somewhere.

I hear Cleveland's got a nice one. Just a thought.

Gettin' drafty, Part ...

 ... ah, whatever.

In this episode, we revisit a popular long-running series, "The Cleveland Browns  Did WHAT?", in which the Browns, having already selected Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel in the third round, decide "Ah, what the hell" and take Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round.

"The Browns did WHAT?" America replied, right on cue.

The Browns took Shedeur Sanders, after already passing on him, I don't know, two or three other times, and having already taken another quarterback. Why, you ask? Beats me. They're the Browns, isn't that answer enough?

Anyway, they now have a quarterback room that looks like a half-off rack at TJ Maxx. You've got Deshaun Watson, all but washed after a series of injuries and disgraced as a serial paw-er of massage therapists. You've got Joe Flacco, who's, like, 85 years old. And you've got Kenny Pickett, who flopped in Pittsburgh and now has a terrific chance to flop in Cleveland.

That was a weird enough mix. But the Browns, apparently thinking "We can get EVEN WEIRDER", are adding two rookies -- one of whom (Gabriel) is probably wondering what the hell is going on, and the other of whom (Sanders) reportedly raised so many red flags at the combine teams ran from him in the draft as if he were the Johnstown Flood.

Imagine the vibe in the room when that crowd gets together for the first time. Never mind, I'll imagine it for you ...

Watson: OK, guys, since I'm clearly the presumptive starter here ...

Everyone else: The presumptive WHAT?

Pickett: Not a chance, dude. I'm the man. Forget Pittsburgh trading me to Philly, and Philly palming me off on this train wreck. See this here? This here's a Super Bowl ring. What's that tell ya, losers?

Watson: That everyone on the Eagles including the second-floor janitor got Super Bowl rings?

Flacco: Yeah, I've got a Super Bowl ring, remember? No, really, remember? 'Cause I can't.

Gabriel: Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?

Sanders: What's going on is I'm here to change this sorry franchise's culture. The future is now, baby, and the future is me!

Gabriel (frowning): I thought I was the future. 

Sanders: No way, Duck Boy. Look at this gem-encrusted watch! Look at this gem-encrusted Flavor Flav-sized pendant! And how about the draft room I decorated with "Legendary" all over it? You think I'd have done that if I weren't, you know, LEGENDARY?

(Everyone rolls their eyes and sighs)

Watson: Yeah, OK, fifth-rounder.

Pickett: What he said.

Flacco: Is it time for lunch yet? Also, what day is it? Thursday, right? Thursday?

Gabriel: Can someone PLEASE tell me what the hell is going on? Please?

Watson, Flacco, Pickett (in unison): Of course we can't! No one can! Welcome to the Browns!

Gettin' drafty, Part Deux

 ... in which everyone weighs in on Shedeur Sanders as he falls down the NFL's Big Board like a skydiver without a chute.

His tumble reached epic proportions Friday as the second and third rounds came and went and Shedeur continued to be the wallflower at a middle-school dance, passed over for three other quarterbacks. The Saints took Tyler Shough from Louisville in the second round; the Seahawks took Jalen Milroe of Alabama and the Browns plucked Dillon Gabriel from Oregon in the third round. New Orleans and Cleveland in particular had been tagged as possible destinations for Sanders in the unsuspecting pre-draft days.

Meanwhile, as noted, everyone weighed on the deepening mystery of Sanders' radioactivity. And by everyone, we mean "everyone."

Come on down, Donald John "Legbreaker" Trump!

Yes, that's right. Even Fearless Leader had something to say about Shedeur -- which isn't surprising considering Donald John figures every true American wants to know what he thinks about everything.

And so, never one to leave a rant un-ranted, Donald John jumped on social media to object to the injustice being visited on poor Shedeur.

"What is wrong with NFL owners, are they STUPID?" the leader of our blessed Regime wrote/spluttered. "Deion Sanders was a great college football player, and was even greater in the NFL. He's also a very good coach, streetwise and smart! Therefore, Shedeur, his quarterback son, has PHENOMENAL GENES, and is all set for Greatness. He should be 'picked' IMMEDIATELY by a team that wants to WIN."

First observation: You don't get rational, informed analysis like this just anywhere.

Second observation: A guy doesn't get that kind of attaboy from Donald John unless DJ has gotten some serious jack from him. Wonder how much Deion contributed to his presidential campaign.

Third observation: Also, wonder how much Deion has invested in Donald John's crypto-currency scam, or his various other scams over the years.

And one last observation, just for the heck of it ...

Donald John ranted his Shedeur rant after the first round. Which makes you wonder if passing over the kid in the second and third rounds might been the owners' reaction to the President of the United States publicly calling them stupid.

"Oh, yeah?" you can almost hear them sneering. "Well, watch THIS, Mr. President!"

And, OK, so that's pretty far-fetched. In fact it's beyond-space-and-time-fetched.

But you know what people say about everything Fearless Leader touches. So there's that.

And in the meantime?

In the meantime, Shedeur Sanders keeps waiting for his cell to buzz.

Hopefully it won't be Donald John. More help like that he doesn't need.

Gettin' drafty

 Well, alrighty, then. So the Cleveland Browns braintrust will not get a chance to turn Travis Hunter into, I don't know, a placekicker or something.

Instead, Brownie the Elf traded down, and Jacksonville and the New York Giants traded up, and Shedeur Sanders traded hubris for humble pie, or some such thing. Whatever. The Bears and Colts both picked tight ends, so who cares, right?

Which is the Blob's cockeyed review of Thursday's first round of the NFL Draft, which the Blob again did not watch because sometimes it likes to pretend it has a life. Also I'm allergic to draft gurus prattling on about tight skin or burst or waist-bending or all the other esoterica with which they fill those endless minutes between picks.

Anyway ... here's some stuff that happened:

1. Miami (Fla.) quarterback Cam Ward went No. 1, as expected, to the Tennessee Titans.

I don't know if this is a good pick. I don't know if this is a bad pick. Frankly I wouldn't know Cam Ward from Cam Shaft. Supposedly he was the best QB in a weak draft for QBs. So I guess we'll see.

2. The Browns traded the second pick to the Jaguars, who used it to select Hunter, the all-world two-way star from Colorado.

Does this mean the Jags plan on playing Hunter at both cornerback and wide receiver? Beats me. All I know is the Jags' quarterback is still Trevor Lawrence. This raises the exciting prospect of seeing Hunter trying to chase down overthrown balls, underthrown balls and balls Trevor Lawrence shouldn't have oughta thrown.

3. The Giants, having already selected Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter, traded up later in the first round to take Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart.

This immediately makes Jaxson Dart the Jints' third-string quarterback of the future, seeing how Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston are already on the roster. Why would the Giants trade up to take a quarterback who may not play that much in 2025, if at all?

I don't know. They're the Giants. Why do they do anything?

4. The Bears took Michigan tight end Colston Loveland with the 10th pick. The Colts took Penn State tight end Tyler Warren with the 14th pick. 

Both look like terrific picks, especially the superbly athletic Warren, whom Penn State lined up pretty much everywhere. This means there's an outside chance the Bears, and especially the Colts, didn't screw up for once.

Something, blind squirrel, acorn, something.

And last, and for the moment, least ...

5. It's Friday morning and Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders is still waiting on a phone call.

I don't know if this is just because he's Deion Sanders' kid, or because, as Deion Sanders' kid, he talked all kinds of smack pre-draft about how only teams that wanted to change their entire culture should pick him. 

No, really. He actually said that. 

NFL teams being notoriously averse to too much swagger in a rookie (and too bright a spotlight on same, which could lead to the dreaded "distraction"), everyone passed on Shedeur in the first round. Which was fairly amazing. I mean, even Jaxson Dart went in the first round.

Meanwhile, the Browns, who said "nah" to Shedeur even though they could use a quarterback, have the first pick in the second round. So there's a decent chance he could wind up in Cleveland.

Where there's a decent chance Shedeur Sanders could be either the Brownies' first culture-changing QB since Bernie Kosar, or the next Tim Couch, Brady Quinn, Brandon Weeden, Johnny Manziel et al.

Mongo

Steve McMichael died yesterday at the age of 67, and, man, does that turn 40 years into smoke. Wasn't it just yesterday Mongo was kicking tush and taking names for the best defense in the history of the NFL?

Could it be just a nanosecond ago that Richard Dent, Mike Singletary, Otis Wilson and the rest of the gang were looking across the line of scrimmage at the poor sap calling signals for the other team, and saying (per the movie) "Let's give him to Mongo"?

Of course it was.

Of course it wasn't, because Steve McMichael is dead, and the Chicago Bears' fabled "46" defense is just a page in a history book, its various pieces all pushing 70 or more.

But with Mongo gone now, it seems like the perfect time to turn back to that page.

Kids who think they saw suffocating defense as played by Ray Lewis and the 2000 Ravens, or the Legion of Boom in Seattle, or even the Eagles D that squashed the Chiefs in the most recent Super Bowl, never saw nothin' 'like the Bears 46. In  1985, Buddy Ryan's all-out hell's-comin'-with-me scheme didn't just suffocate opponents; it demoralized them. In a lot of games it had people beat before Mongo 'n' them ever stepped foot on the field.

Some numbers: In the Bears' 15-1 march to the W in Super Bowl XX, they gave up just 12.4 points and 258.4 yards per game. Throw out the one loss -- a 38-24 Monday night loss to the Dolphins that was an aberration if ever there was one -- and in 15 games, the Bears surrendered just 160 points.

That's 10.6 points per, if you do the math. A touchdown and a field goal in an era when everyone was throwing it all over the lot thanks to the 49ers' much-imitated ball-control passing game.

And McMichael?

One of the biggest ducks in the Bears' kick-ass puddle.

That season he had eight sacks, third on the team behind Richard Dent's 17 and Otis Wilson's 10.5. By the time he hung 'em up after 15 seasons, he had 95 sacks. Of those, he racked up 92.5 in 13 seasons for the Bears.

All these years later, that's still second on the Bears' all-time list.

He also never missed a start, or hardly ever. Between 1981 and 1994, he played in 207 games; his 191 consecutive games for the Bears remains the franchise record.

Which might or might not explain why he stayed in the fight so long after being diagnosed with ALS in 2021.

Four years is a long time to go toe-to-toe with such a vile killer, but Mongo did it. Lived long enough to be inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame last August; he was bedridden and unable to speak by then, but he watched on TV as his wife Misty unveiled his HOF bust and delivered his induction speech.

And in the room around him?

His teammates, of course. His fellow 46ers. No doubt, to this day, still looking for the poor sap calling signals for the other team.

And no doubt, on that day more than ever, wishing they could give him to Mongo.

Double duty?

 Tomorrow in Green Bay the NFL Draft begins, and OMIGOD TOMORROW THE NFL DRAFT BEGINS!! THE NFL DRAFT, AMERICA!!

Which is my way of expressing the level of excitement ESPN expects from you humps about the Shield's annual three-day auction to determine which sadsack NFL team is going to ruin which college star's life with one fateful phone call. Congratulations, son, you're a Tennessee Titan/Cleveland Brown/New York Giant. We suck, and now you're gonna suck, too! Welcome!

Any-hoo, the drama is upon us, or so the NFL and ESPN wants everyone to believe. And I suppose there is an element of suspense involved in what is frankly just a series of business transactions when you get right down to it.

For instance:Will the Tennessee Titans, who are expected to take Miami (Fla.) quarterback Cam Ward with the No. 1 pick, screw everything up by taking Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter or Colorado two-way star Travis Hunter instead?

If so, will a running back (Ashton Jeanty) actually go before a quarterback?

Will the Giants get suckered into trading the third pick to a fictitious team from Idaho, the Coeur d'Alene Maple Creams?

And speaking of ruining a college star's life, will the Browns take Travis Hunter with the second pick?

These are the same Browns, remember, who tried to make an NFL quarterback out of Johnny Manziel. Who turned Baker Mayfield into a bust and then traded him to Tampa Bay, where he not-so-amazingly became a non-bust. And who'll now get to decide whether the multi-talented Hunter plays cornerback, wide receiver or does double duty.

Go ahead and shudder at the implications.

Also, imagine being a fly on the wall as the Browns braintrust mulls its options:

Brain No. 1: I say play him at cornerback. No, wait, wide receiver. No, wait, cornerback.

Brain No. 2: Ah, geez, make up your mind. 

Brain No. 3: Seriously, dude.

Brain No. 1: Yeah? OK, geniuses, what's YOUR idea?

Brain No. 2: Simple. Play him both ways. What the hell, the kid wants to try it, I say let him try it.

Brain No. 3: Seriously!

Brain No. 1: Oh, come on! You can't play a guy both ways in the modern NFL. He'll be on IR by the third game! Or if he miraculously doesn't get hurt, he'll look like Tom Hanks in "Castaway" by Thanksgiving. Hell, he'll probably even be talking to volleyballs.

Brain No. 2: But think of the pub, man! A 60-minute man in the modern NFL? The Browns will be on every magazine cover in America, and not because we did something stupid.  And the day Travis catches 12 balls at wideout and has two picks on defense? We'll be the No. 1 topic on every talk show in America!

Brain No. 3: Seriously!

Brain No. 1 (sarcastically): Well, gee, let's just play him at quarterback, too, then. He could throw a deep seam and then use his superhuman speed to catch it. Or have him kick off and return the kick. Alter the very laws of physics, not to mention the rulebook!

(Brief pause as everyone actually considers this)

Brain No. 2: Well, you know ...

Brain No. 3: Seriously!

Know the most mind-boggling thing about all that?

Given that we're talking about the Browns, it might not be satire.

Seriously.

Tit for tat ...

... or, you know, Nico for Joey.

Welcome to the latest episode in that wildest of Wild West Shows, "Transfer Portal Shenanigans," brought to you by Subway, All-State and whatever college athletics is now. In this edition, major-league college football and basketball's inertial movement toward full professional status reached a new milestone yesterday:

The first actual player trade.

OK, so not a trade, exactly. The two schools involved were not, well, involved in the deal (at least that we know of). But it amounted to tomato, to-mah-to.

What happened was, Nico Iamaleava transferred from Tennessee to UCLA, on account of Tennessee wouldn't rework his NIL deal and said "There's the door, son."

After which a kid named Joey Aguilar, freshly arrived in L.A. from Appalachian State, transferred from UCLA to Tennessee.

Needless to say, both Nico and Joey are quarterbacks. And thus, voila, a quarterback-for-quarterback trade. Of sorts.

And, sure, it was bound to happen sometime, given the way players are portaling from hither to yon like Captain Kirk transporting down to do battle with the Gorn. You say the old alma mater just landed the 2-guard everyone in America was after? Well, say goodbye to your current 2-guard, then. He's leaping into the portal for parts unknown, where his arrival will cause that school's 2-guard to leap into the portal, and ...

And so on and so forth.

In this particular case, it remains to be seen which school got the better end of their quarterback swap. Iamaleava (which, it just occurred to me, could be pronounced "I-am-a-leave(e)-a"), who still has three years of eligibility, threw for 2,616 yards and 19 touchdowns and ran for 358 yards and three more scores for a Tennessee team that went 10-2 and reached the College Football Playoff, where it was washed by eventual national champion Ohio State.

And Aguilar?

In the last two seasons at App State, he threw for 6,760 yards and 56 touchdowns before transferring to UCLA (and his home state of California) in the winter portal. Then Iamaleava showed up, and he was gone before he'd even learned the UCLA fight song.

(The fight song is called either "Sons of Westwood" or "Bruin Warriors", in case you were wondering. And you were, because why else would you read the Blob unless it was to obtain valuable knowledge like that?)

Anyway, Aguilar is headed for the place Iamaleava just, well, left. It's probably unfair to use the word "fled" to describe his departure, because that would imply Joey was afraid of competing for the job with the new arrival. On the other hand, it's perhaps not unfair to imply that.

Then again ...

Then again, maybe Joey thinks he looks better in orange than he does in powder-blue-and-gold. And maybe he thinks "Sons of Westwood/Bruin Warriors" blows because he's always harbored a secret love for "Rocky Top", playing it over and over late at night on his MP3 when everyone else was asleep.

Hey. Stranger things have happened.

And will continue to happen, clearly.

Stanley watch

 The best of all playoffs began over Easter weekend, and the good news is, the regular season champs DID NOT CRASH AND BURN. OK, so they crashed a little, for awhile, but they didn't burn.

I'm speaking, of course, of the Stanley Cup playoffs, and of the Winnipeg Jets, who finished the regular season with a league-best 56-22-4 record. Their 116 points were five clear of the second-best team, the Washington Capitals, and their goal differential -- plus-86 -- was the best in the league by nine goals. They also had the league's best goaltender in Connor Hellebuyck. 

All of this traditionally should doom the Jets in the playoffs. 

That's because the best team in the regular season hardly ever hoists Stanley, and you can look it up. It's been 17 years since it last happened, when the Detroit Red Wings beat Pittsburgh in the 2008 Stanley Cup Final. And it's not like the Jets have a lot of history going for them on top of that.

No, sir. Neither the original Jets (who relocated to Phoenix in 1996) nor the reconstituted Jets (who arrived in 2011 as the former Atlanta Thrashers) have ever won a Stanley Cup. They've never even reached the Cup Final. 

Not once. Not in 53 years. Oh-for-53, that's the Jets.

But, hey, there's still hope!

The other night, after all, the Jets opened the playoffs with a 5-3 win at home over St. Louis. And, OK, so it wasn't pretty. Hellebuyck wasn't himself; he wasn't exactly a sieve, but he did give up three goals in the first two periods. The Blues, who barely scraped into the playoffs, led 3-2 at that point.

But then the Jets said, "Hey, wait a minute, we were the best team in the regular season, and they barely scraped into the playoffs!" (Or something like that). They scored three goals in the third, outshot St. Louis 9-2 and pulled out the W.

This means they're up 1-0 in the series and still in the running to become the first Canadian team in 32 years to put their paws on the Cup. Thirty-two years! Geez, Bill Clinton was a newbie president then. Donald Trump was just another mega-rich jackass palling around with Jeffrey Epstein and putting his name on stuff. It was a long time ago.

The good news for our neighbors to the north is they've got more chances than ever this year to end the drought, on account of every Canadian team except Calgary and Vancouver made the playoffs. Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Edmonton are all in. Surely one of them could hot for two months, right?

Except for, you know, the Jets, because the best team never wins. And also the Maple Leafs, because, well, they're the Maple Leafs -- the Chicago Cubs of the NHL, continually raising their fans' hopes only to cruelly dash them on the jagged rocks of failure. 

(Or something like that)

Anyway, that's your Stanley Cup watch for now. May the best team win.

Or the sort of best team. Or some team. Whatever.

Everyday barbarity

 The remembering place is at the top of a grassy hill, up a winding path from a green park where children play and parents watch and families lay out the picnic things. 

It's quiet up here, beneath the wide Colorado sky. A breeze ripples the grass and tugs at your cap. A wide paved entryway opens onto an earth-tone brick wall that curves gracefully away from you. Set into it here and there are bronze plaques inscribed with words of ache and loss and bewilderment, and of a determination never, ever to forget.

A mile away, give or take, across from the park and a parking lot and this peaceful hilltop, sits Columbine High School.

Where, 26 years ago today, two lost kids named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hauled firearms and homemade bombs into their school, murdered a teacher and a dozen of their classmates, and wounded 20 others. Then they shot themselves.

The remembering place -- the Columbine Memorial -- is the result of all that. It's a community's way of coping with an unimaginable loss back when it was still impossible to imagine such loss.

Theirs was not the first school shooting in America's history, but it became the seminal one in the national consciousness -- the dividing line between a time when we could still fancy ourselves a civilized nation, and this different, darker time. The cold deliberation of the act, its naked barbarity, lent it a particular horror that remains even as the barbarity has become a seeming everyday reality.

Columbine, see, was only beginning, or the imagined beginning. In time there would be Sandy Hook and Uvalde and Las Vegas and Aurora and Virginia Tech and dozens upon dozens others -- a veritable mass-shooting-of-the-week that would evoke pro forma thoughts-and-prayers from politicians who couldn't have cared less, and a sort of normalized numbness from an America grown used to living in an armed camp.

That armed camp produced yet another school shooter this week, and it wasn't a transgender or a Venezuelan gang member or some alleged terror-lover. It was a white 20-year-old MAGA from Tallahassee, Fla., the son of a deputy sheriff, who borrowed his mom's service revolver and shot eight people, two fatally, during an afternoon stroll on the campus of Florida State University.

And how did the President of the United States respond?

More or less with a shrug and "these things will happen." Or words to that effect.

Given the mindset of the president's fear-driven Regime, it's not unfair to wonder how different his reaction might have been had the shooter not been a Regime supporter. Not much of a stretch to imagine how the Regime would have revved up the Other machine if the shooter had been one of those creepy transgenders, or a Hispanic immigrant, or a Middle Eastern college student. Or, God forbid, a Democrat.

You might think this is straying a bit afield, but it's not really. In ways both big and small, that hilltop in Colorado, and the date it memorializes, is the on-ramp to a lot of it.

I've been thinking about that hilltop all weekend, and especially the bizarre confluence of the weekend's dates. Yesterday, for instance -- April 19 -- was the 250th anniversary of Lexington, Concord and an uprising of farmers and yeomen that became the American Revolution. It was also the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, who no doubt thought murdering 168 babies, children and everyday working Americans somehow made him kith and kin to those farmers and yeomen.

It didn't, of course. Instead, he was just a monster who died by lethal injection six years later in the federal pen. Put down like a rabid animal, and good riddance.

And today, April 20th?

The anniversary of Columbine. And also Easter Sunday, when those of us who believe celebrate the risen Christ, the most important day of our faith.

The world is a strange place.

And while you're praying your Easter prayers, pray it never becomes stranger, or darker, or uglier, or ever requires another hilltop remembering place.

Off and ... we'll see

 Time now to check in with Your Indiana Pacers, on account of the NBA playoffs have begun and the Your Pacers opened yesterday with a thorough 117-98 fanny-warming of the Milwaukee Bucks. Pascal Siakam scored 25 points on 10-of-15 shooting, Tyrese Halliburton parceled out a dozen assists with just one turnover, and ain't God good to Indiana? Ain't he though?

(Random William Miller Herschell reference. You're welcome.)

Anyway, Your Pacers put four of their five starters in double figures, bottomed 13 threes, shot 53 percent and outrebounded the Milwaukees. Myles Turner scored 19 points, cleared five boards and blocked four shots. Your Pacers led 67-43 at the break and never looked back.

However.

"Oh, here we go," you're saying now. "Why you gotta do this? Can't you just say 'Yay, Pacers'? Can't you let Pacers Nation bask for ONE LOUSY MINUTE in the W before you start in with the 'howevers'?"

OK, OK. One minute. Go.

(Brief 60-second pause in today's post)

Satisfied now? 

Good, because all I mean by "however" is the NBA playoffs outlast entire epochs of human existence, and stuff tends to happen. Momentum is a chimera in sports, we all know that, but it seems especially true in the NBA. You don't have to search very hard for proof; it's as close to hand as the Pacers in last year's playoffs, when they played like kings one game and like beheaded kings the next. 

And so, yes, yesterday was a good start, but a start is all it is. In Game 2 tomorrow, Giannis Antetokoumpo, who scored 36 of the 50 points put up by Milwaukee's starters, might actually get some help. Kyle Kuzma, who didn't score a point in Game 1, could go for 20 this time. Brook Lopez, who had a quiet nine-point, four-rebound night, could got for a double-double. Siakam could miss 10 of 15 instead of making 10 of 15.

Or, you know, not.

Your Pacers could continue to pound the wounded Bucks, who are playing without Damian Lillard. It could be 2-0 for the good guys heading north to Milwaukee. Siakam could go off again; Halliburton, who scored just 10 points in Game 1, could put up a 30-spot; Giannis could come down with a bum back from carrying everyone else.

It's platinum-grade trite to say you just never know. But you just never know.

Which is what makes the NBA playoffs so compelling despite their seeming endlessness. You can be off and running one night. And a couple nights later?

Well. We'll see.

One for the ages

 Science has yet to prove there's some atmospheric disturbance over Wrigley Field that makes crazy stuff happen, but science has a lot on its plate these days. Sooner or later the boys and girls in the lab coats will get around to it.

In the meantime, we have only circumstantial evidence to go on.

Like a young Kerry Wood striking out 20 Houston Astros one April afternoon.

Like the Philadelphia Phillies and your homestanding Chicago Cubs combining for 45 runs, 50 hits and 11 home runs in a 23-22 Phillies win on a breezy day in May.

Like ...

Well. Like the Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks doing whatever the hell that was yesterday.

The final box score tells us it was a 13-11 Cubs win, but that ain't the crazy part. The crazy part was what happened in the eighth inning.

When the D-Backs scored 10 runs in their half to erase a seemingly safe 7-1 lead for the home team.

And when the Cubs then scored six runs in their half to snatch back the lead and preserve the wildest W in the bigs so far this season, or perhaps in a whole bunch of seasons.

According to baseball's all-seeing record book, yesterday's insanity was only the seventh time in 125 years that a team has given up 10 or more runs in an inning and won. It was also only the fifth time a team has given up 10 or more runs and then scored six or more in the same inning.

So the Cubs have that going for them.

What they clearly don't have, according to a friend who's been a Cubs fan forever, is a bullpen that isn't human lighter fluid. 

Through the first seven innings yesterday, four Cubs pitchers yielded just one run on six hits and struck out eight D-Backs. Then came the firestarters: Across the last two innings, the Cubs pen surrendered 10 runs on nine hits -- two of them homers, including a grand slam -- and fanned just one batter.

It was so bad one of the Cubs relievers, Jordan Wicks, had an ERA of "infinity." Seriously. Go look it up.

Of course, the D-Backs bullpen was a tattoo parlor as well. Handed a four-run lead with just six outs remaining, Arizona relievers Bryce Jarvis and Joe Mantiply were launched into space, giving up six runs on seven hits, including those three dingers.

Final tally for the day: 23 combined runs, 33 combined hits, seven combined home runs, 15 combined extra-base hits. And another one for the ages from the Friendly Atmosphere Disturbance.

Craziness. Glorious craziness.

Head of his class

 Time now to put on an alligator head and salute the man who's never taken himself so damn seriously, because didn't anyone ever tell you college football was supposed to be fun? Didn't any of you notice what an absolute gosh-darn hoot it is?

Well, step right up, then, and hand some flowers to Lee Corso, who is 89 going on 17 and is about to don his last gator (or lion, or tiger, or Oklahoma State cowboy) head. The other day he announced he's retiring after one last ESPN College GameDay broadcast Aug. 30, and the salutes came rolling in from all quarters. Because how does Lee Corso not warm the cockles of your heart, whatever a cockle is? 

You'd have to be the Scroogiest of Scrooges not to give the man his due, even if in his later years his fastball was not what it once was. He's been a part of GameDay -- the fun part -- since it premiered in 1987, and for nearly the last 30 years he's been the grand finale of the whole banana split. That's when he started choosing the winner of whatever game he and the GameDay gang were at by donning the head of that school's mascot.

So, yeah, he's worn a Florida Gator head, oh, you bet. And the head of the Oklahoma State Cowboy. The Penn State Nittany Lion? You bet he'll stick his head in its papier mache mouth. A TCU Horned Frog head? A Brutus the Ohio State Buckeye head? A Colorado Buffalo head, an Oregon Duck head, an Alabama Crimson Tide elephant head, even the full armor of a USC Trojan?

Bring 'em on. It's what America is waiting for, right?

The dirty secret behind all this tomfoolery is Corso knew his football, too, and when he was a coach he wanted to win as badly as anyone. But he was also a realist.

He knew, for instance, that when he came to Indiana in the early 1970s there was an excellent chance he wasn't going to win a lot, at least at first. So one game he and the team arrived on the field in a double-decker bus. He got Woody Hayes all wrathy once when the Hoosiers scored first against one of Woody's Ohio State juggernauts, and Corso gathered his team in front of the scoreboard for a picture.

Then there was the time he scheduled a home-and-home with USC because, as he put it, he wanted to keep his promise to bring a Rose Bowl team to Indiana. And that time at Louisville when he rode an elephant to give his program some badly needed pub.

A few years later came his spectacularly ham-fisted firing in Bloomington, which school officials announced while Corso was out of town, the cowards. A few years after that came College GameDay, and Corso's signature line "Not so fast, my friend", and all the rest.

Want know something, though?

In 38 years, his best GameDay moment might not have been all those mascot heads, or the time he dressed up like the Notre Dame leprechaun, or the time he dressed up as Ben Franklin when GameDay went to an Ivy League game between Penn and Harvard. It might have happened just last fall.

That's when fellow Gameday host Kirk Herbstreit broke down on the set talking about his beloved golden retriever Ben, who passed away after becoming something of a Gameday mascot himself. The guy sitting next to Herbie promptly reached over and gave him a grandfatherly pat him on the shoulder.

I don't have to tell you who that guy was. You know.

It was Lee Corso.  Ol' Mascot Head himself.

And the head of his class, of course.

Health nuts

 I should know better, after all this time. In fact I do know better, but sometimes the better angels of my nature get pushed aside by the angels from the wrong side of the tracks, and off they take me to places I know I shouldn't go.

In other words: Sometimes I just can't hold my tongue. Even when I know it's pointless.

And so again with my standard disclaimer, because I'm going off the Sportsball rez once more. Here's your hall pass. The library is thataway. You've heard it all before.

Me, I'm gonna talk a bit about Frick and Frack. Mostly Frick.

Their legit handles are Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Frick) and Dr. Mehmet Oz (Frack), and they were in Indiana the other day talkin' about health and stuff. One (Frick) is the head of Health and Human Services, and also a conspiracy kook and former heroin addict. The other is a TV doctor turned political appointee.

That day in Indiana, they stood alongside our illustrious governor, Mike Braun, who was  talkin' up his new initiative, "Making Indiana Healthy Again." Scores of Hoosiers, being notorious contrarians, no doubt put down their giant pork tenderloins long enough to say, "Bite me, Mikey."

Frick and Frack, on the other hand, thought the guv's initiative was a splendid idea, even if one of its more significant proposals is to deny parents on public assistance the use of those funds to buy their kids an occasional Snickers. Take that, urchins!

But I'm getting off the path here.

What I really mean to address is one of Frick's traditional bugaboos, autism. In his new role, he wants to get to the bottom of why autism rates are rising among America's children. And as part of that, he's assigned a man named David Geier the task of looking into links between autism and ... vaccines.

Aaaand down that rabbit hole we go again.

Remember Jenny McCarthy saying vaccines were bad, bad, bad because they caused autism? Remember Frick, before the Regime made him our Health Czar, advancing the same notion?

It was David Geier and his doctor dad, Mark Geier, who put that in their heads.

According to their highly dubious study, an element found in vaccines caused autism. Their conclusions were promptly and roundly discredited by every medical authority who, unlike the Geiers, weren't out-and-out quacks. The whole "study", in fact, was such a joke Doc Geier had his license yanked and his son -- who had no medical background whatsoever -- was charged with practicing medicine without a license.

(You can find all of that, and more, here, in Christer Watson's oped piece in The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Subscribe today. They put out lots of good stuff.)

In any case, David Geier is back, baby. And Frick is saying stuff about autism that indicates he has even less clear an understanding of it than he does of so much else.

Here's what he said about autistic kids the other day, for instance: "And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted ..."

I can say unequivocally and with some authority that Frick is completely full of s*** about that. No toilet pun intended.

I can say this because I have some fairly intimate knowledge about autism and how it works, and Frick has no ... freaking ... clue.  I won't tell you how I came by that knowledge, because it's none of your damn business. But rest assured I do.

See, what Frick was saying about autistic kids ignores the fact that autism presents in myriad ways, and there are as many coping mechanisms to help those on the autism spectrum fit into the "normal" world. It's true the most severe cases may never manage to do that, but a vast swath of those on the spectrum learn not to just live in a world they find strange, but to thrive in it.

They, yes, hold down jobs. They, yes, pay taxes. They graduate from college, they negotiate business deals, they manage their finances, they find love. Some of them, yes, might even play baseball.

Tarik El-Abour, for instance.

Who in 2018 became the first minor-league player known to be on the spectrum when he signed with the Kansas City Royals organization. Tarik wasn't just on the spectrum; he was on the spectrum. He didn't speak until he was 6 years old. He'd only eat five foods. And when he was 10 years old and first discovered baseball, it was as alien to him as the surface of Neptune.

But at some point, he fell in love with it. 

Played it in high school. Went to college and played it there. Eventually caught the eye of a Royals scout. 

I'm sure Frick never heard of him.

I'm equally sure I pray I don't get sick anytime soon, seeing how we've put the nation's health in the hands of a guy who spent 14 years frying half his brain cells, a TV quack and another quack who presumably still thinks vaccines cause autism.

God help us.

The new chumps

 Time now for another of the Blob's semi-irregular features, seeing how it's mid-April and the baseball season has been chugging along  nicely for about three weeks if you count the Cubs-Dodgers series over in Japan.

Yes, that's right boys girls. "Cruds Alert!" is back, baby!

And, no, this time it does not highlight my very own Pittsburgh Cruds, who are 6-12 and last as usual in the NL Central. This is because even though they're still my Cruds, they're actually the best of the last-place teams in the National League. Call it a pride deal.

But there's more!

In a stunning upset, today's "Cruds Alert!" also does not feature the defending chumps, your Chicago What Sox, even though the Whats are already eight games under .500 (4-12) and have resumed their place as the worst team in the American League. That's because there's a new chump-een out there.

Come on down, you Colorado Rockheads!

Who are 3-14, have lost their last five and are 2-8 in their last ten. They've played all of 17 games, and already they have double-digit road losses (10). And they're already 10 1/2 games out of first in the NL West and seven out of next-to-last.

In 17 games. Seven ... teen.

This is 2024 What Sox-level stuff, and raises the alarming possibility that the south side of Chicago is about to be subjected to the worst of all fates: Ordinary everyday awfulness instead of truly epic awfulness.

 Last summer, after all, a southsider could at least see history being made when he or she visited Guaranteed Comiskey Rate Park. But now that the Rockheads seem poised to be this season's featured loser, all the What Sox can offer their fans is day after dreary day of horrid baseball without the alluring soupcon of immortality.

The Rockheads, on the other hand, are on pace to lose 133 games right now. Which would make the 2024 What Sox' 121 losses look like weak cheese indeed. 

Of course, it's a long season, and circumstances can change. The 'Heads could catch fire and go on a 9-18 tear at some point. Or the What Sox could really catch fire and reel off another book-length losing streak to put the Rockheads in their wake. 

Shoot. Even the rootless Athletics could get in on this, seeing how they only have half a name and thus are already a leg up on both the 'Heads and the Whats. They're not the Oakland Athletics anymore, but they're also not the Sacramento Athletics. Sacramento is just where they've parked their transient selves while they wait for the next train to hop.

In which case, perhaps they should call themselves the Tom Joad Athletics. It's a thought.

At any rate, the A's are no great shakes, either, at 7-10 and last in the AL West. But they're not the Rockheads or the What Sox, aside from the homeless thing. 

And no one's the 'Heads right now.

Who are so bad not even fellow Denverite Nikola Jokic could come across town and save 'em. And that's saying something.

We are all enemies now

 (In which the Blob issues its standard disclaimer about wandering off the Sportsball reservation in search of an open space to shake its fist in a non-compartmented manner. You know the drill.)

A bright chilly Tuesday here in the United States of Suspicion, and I'm thinking about the Brits again.

There were three of them, a father and his almost-adult children, one a university student and the other a high school kid, or whatever they call high school in Great Britain. The young man was a huge NBA fan, and when he found out I was a retired sportswriter he grilled me about Steph and LeBron and all his other faves. The young woman, her father said with ill-disguised pride, was a talented artist.

One warm summer afternoon a couple of years back, we sat chatting in the observation car of the California Zephyr, the stunning canvas of America sliding past as we rode the rails west through Utah and Nevada and on toward San Francisco.

"What brings you to the States?" I asked, at one point.

The father replied that he wanted to show his children America, and he decided taking the train across the country was how to do that. It unfolded more slowly that way, like a topo  map unfolding in real time to reveal worn foothills and mountains and farmland and endless prairie and the stark, jagged beauty of the American west.

The country in all its grandeur and squalor and infinite ordinariness, in other words. That's what Dad was after when they all boarded the train in New York City and set off for the Pacific.

I didn't ask how long they planned to be in the country. It didn't seem to matter at the time.

Now it might.

Now, see, it is no longer that time but this time, the time of the Regime, when America has grown grim and insensate, not to mention deeply paranoid about anyone who is not, you know, American. If you speak no English, or you speak it with a funny accent, or you look, (wink-wink) different, you are not to be trusted, in this America. 

You're a foreigner, dammit. And foreigners are up to no good more times than you think.

Which is why, at the end of last week, the Regime rolled out its latest edict regarding foreign nationals: If you are one of them, and you're 14 or older, you have 30 days to register with the government. If you've been here longer than that, or plan to be, and haven't registered, it's a misdemeanor. Depending on the circumstances, you could even be deported.

Also, once you've registered, you must carry proof on your person at all times.

Me, I wonder if that would have applied to the British father and his two kids.

They were simply delightful people, the three of them, and so, as obvious tourists, perhaps they wouldn't have had to carry the proper papers (German accent implied, naturally). And perhaps, on Day 31, some jackbooted Regime official would not have asked to see them. 

 Honestly, I don't really know. Neither the Dog Killer (i.e. Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem) nor Regime mouthpiece Spinderella Barbie (i.e., press secretary Karoline Leavitt) made it clear how America would treat foreign nationals who were just here on an extended holiday. 

You'd hope my British friends would have been treated like guests and not potential terrorists. You'd hope they would have been treated the way America used to treat overseas visitors back when America was still America, and not this dark, angry place it's become.

You treated people from elsewhere with common decency, in that other America. You assumed the best about them and not the worst. You granted them the benefit of the doubt as a simple courtesy.

But that was then. And this is now.

When we are all enemies, it seems, until proven otherwise.

Closer and closer

 There is professional football afoot in America right now, sort of, and, no, I am not talking about the the Memphis Showboats vs. the Michigan Panthers. That's the UFL, which barely counts, seeing how no one's watching it except degenerate gamblers and various other sadsacks.

 No, sirree. I'm talkin' about real professional football, where players make salary demands and teams either say "yea" or "nay." 

"Oh, come on!" you're saying now. "Isn't the NFL shoving mock drafts down our throats enough for you? Do we have to read about Roger Goodell's kingdom 24/7/365?"

Who says I'm talking about the NFL?

'Cause I'm not.

No, I'm talking about the other professional football, which is frankly just as professional as the NFL and way more so than the UFL. I'm talking about college football.

Where, down at the University of Tennessee, the Volunteers just said "nay" to quarterback Nico Iamaleava's salary demands. Seems Nico wanted $4 mill to stick around, and Tennessee told him to take a hike.

And, OK, so Nico wasn't demanding a salary, exactly. College football hasn't gotten brave enough to dive into those waters just yet. But the day when it finally whispers "OK, time to quit stalling and DO THIS" is getting closer and closer, and the Nico situation illustrates just how close that day might be.

What, after all, is the fundamental difference between an NIL deal and an actual salary to play football for dear old Whatsamatta U.? 

Now that schools can get directly involved in those deals, the fiction of the "student-athlete" is even more fictitious than ever. It's a fairy tale straight from the Brothers Grimm. And the dynamic between Nico Iamaleava and the University of Tennessee only the latest proof.

Nico, or at least his representatives (yes, college kids have "representatives" now) made a demand; Tennessee said no. Word has it he and several other Tennessee players even considered sitting out the College Football Playoff last year to leverage a better deal.

Just like, you know, Player X refusing to report to training camp because he's in a salary beef with the Vikings or the Browns or the Giants or the Eagles or whoever.

The only difference at this point is, unlike the NFL, college football has no contract structure to act as a guardrail. And coupled with the unrestrained transfer portal, that makes every Nico Iamaleava a free agent every year and all the time. 

And that is an unsustainable model.

Which means sooner rather than later college football is going to have to swallow hard and admit, finally and irrevocably, that the fiction is dead and  their "student-athletes" are employees of the university just as surely as, say, Kyler Murray is an employee of the Arizona Cardinals. They're there to generate revenue for a specific brand, only instead of the Arizona Cardinals it's ... well, the University of Tennessee or University of Michigan or Penn State University or the University of Alabama.

An actual professional structure that treated players like the pros they already are would finally acknowledge that reality. It would lock them into multi-year contracts for an agreed-upon salary, throwing a lasso around the current Wild West show.

In the meantime, here is college football: Standing on the high dive, steeling itself, looking down at all that deep, deep water.

It looks more than just intimidating, at this point. It looks inevitable. 

The war within

The leaderboard lied to all of us, first off. Fed us a straight-up, top-of-the-line stretcher.

See those names up there? J. Rose and L. Aberg and, hell, even B. DeChambeau for a time?

They weren't the ones chasing R. McIlroy through the sunlight and shadow of Augusta National Sunday afternoon. 

They weren't the ones bringing the heat, breathing down his neck, turning his knees to jelly and his nerves to marmalade.

The guy who did that was R. McIlroy himself. And it was one almighty struggle.

R. McIlroy, first name Rory, came to Sunday with a two-shot lead and the green jacket and career Grand Slam in sight, and he got both. But not before Himself put him on the rack and tortured him a bit, just for the fun of it.

It was Rory, see, who radared irons into the greens, and feathered a seeing-eye draw on 15 that was the shot of the Masters, and built a four-stroke lead with eight holes to play. And it was Himself who kept finding water and beachfront and sliding spitting-distance putts past the cup, blowing the lead and then regaining it and then blowing it again and then regaining it again.

Any number of times yesterday, Rory could have ended it. He had it in his hip pocket after back-to-back birds at 9 and 10 -- he led J. Rose, first name Justin, by four strokes at that point -- but then Himself seized the wheel.

Bogey at 11. Double-bogey at 13. Another bogey at 14.

That's four strokes lost in four holes, if you're keeping score at home. You could practically hear the beep-beep-beep as Rory backed up to the field.

But wait, there's more!

At 15, Rory took back the wheel and hit that spooky-good draw.

Then Himself yakked the extremely makeable putt for eagle that would have essentially ended it.

Then Rory dropped the comeback birdie to draw even with Rose again, dropped another iron in the bucket to birdie 17 and retake the lead, and came to 18 needing only a par to finish it.

Himself promptly hit a popup into a greenside bunker.

After which Rory blasted out to within whispering distance of the jacket and the Slam. After which Himself -- again! -- put a faint-hearted stroke on the putt for par, trundling it wide right and forcing R. McIlroy into a playoff with J. Rose.

And then ...

And then, Rory grabbed the wheel one last time.

After Rose dropped his approach within a legit birdie putt of the pin, Rory did him one better. He dropped his approach so close to the jar he could have knocked in the birdie putt with a garden hose, and after Rose's birdie try missed, McIlroy tapped in for the green jacket, the career Slam, the whole damned thing.

Rarely has a man won a golf tournament who tried so hard to lose it.

Rarely have we seen the war within every pro golfer more starkly play out, nor seen its toll so openly expressed.

You've seen the video now, no doubt: How Rory flung his putter skyward as the ball dived into the cup, then dropped to his knees, put his head down and wept into the grass, shoulders shaking. Then he was up and screaming at the sky. and grabbing his caddy, and making the long stroll to the clubhouse, his features arranging and re-arranging as he cried and then laughed and then cried some more.

It was the look one of the greatest golfers of his generation wears when he's finally achieved immortality, after years of wrenching misses.

It was the look of a man who once again went toe-to-toe with his cruelest nemesis, and finally, finally took him down.

R. McIlroy 1. Himself 0.

Put that up on the scoreboard.

Again the chasee

 And now the latest renewal of that long-running Augusta National favorite, "How Will Rory Blow It This Time?", aka "Oh, Crap, I'm Leading Again", aka "I Bet I Could Hit One O' Them Cabins Over There If I Really Tried."

Which Rory McIlroy famously did once -- OK, so almost did -- during one of his several Sunday meltdowns at the Masters. And now he's the chasee again after 54 holes, leading Bryson DeChambeau by two nervous strokes. Cue the spooky Organ Music Of Foreboding.

If I were a betting man, I'd drop some coin on DeChambeau to don the green jacket. Guy birdied three of the last four holes yesterday to whittle McIlroy's lead from four strokes to two, and finished by dunking a 48-foot Rand McNally birdie on 18. He's not just breathing down Rory's neck, he's practically sharing McIlroy's shirt with him.

Now, it's true McIlroy put up an impeccable 66 to semi-separate himself, bagging a couple of eagles along the way. It's also true this will be his 11th crack at completing the career Grand Slam, something that's been done in the Masters era only by Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Your basic golf Hall of Fame, in other words.

McIlroy would fit in nicely with that group, seeing how's he's one of the pre-eminent golfers of his generation. So you can look at him finally breaking through today as merely history behaving itself.

And yet ...

And yet, it's the Masters. 

It's Sunday.

It's Augusta National, Amen Corner and all that mess.

Gruesome car crashes in the final 18 holes are kind of a thing here, in other words. People hitting golf balls into ponds and creeks and up against pines, or deep into the patrons lining the ropes. Snap hooks sailing off into parts unknown. Putts in swim trunks and carrying beach towels rolling fast across the diabolical greens into bodies of water.

I don't know any of that will happen to Rory today, once again. I don't know if he'll smite another cabin, or hit six balls into Rae's Creek, or triple-doink a snap hook off a stately pine, a port-a-potty and the dome of Merle the insurance salesman from Colorado Springs. 

I hope he doesn't.

I hope, for posterity's sake, he holds off DeChambeau, and doesn't get waylaid because one of his other pursuers -- a Corey Conners, say, or Patrick Reed or Ludvig Aberg -- lapses into unconsciousness and puts up some baroque number. The order of the golfing universe, or something, would be all out of round without Rory McIlroy finally donning a green jacket. 

I'm still picking DeChambeau, however. I'm just mean that way.

Bum Rushed

 Twirled the radio dial in the conveyance looking for the local sports talk show one afternoon this week, and the local sports talk show wasn't there. It had simply vanished into the ether (or wherever radio waves go when they vanish), and instead Jim Rome was yapping at me.

This was not an acceptable tradeoff.

It was not acceptable because the local show -- called SportsRush, coming to us live from1380 AM -- was about the only one I regularly listened to, not being a particular fan of most sports talk radio. It kept me plugged into the local/area scene, because as an old sportswriter, old sportswriter-ly habits die hard. Plus the host, Brett Rump, is a friend of mine.

But suddenly it was just gone. Poof. No announcement, no explanation, no nothin'. Just got disappeared the way foreign college students get disappeared these days -- and there instead was Jim Bleeping Rome, whom I frankly despise.

Which means I guess you could call this a personal beef. So be it.

Doesn't mean it's not legit, though.

It's legit because the city where I live, Fort Wayne, is a damn lively sports town, one entirely worthy of two hours in the late afternoon Monday through Friday. We've got one of the iconic minor-league hockey franchises in America here, the Komets of the ECHL. Got one of the best-run, most successful minor-league baseball teams in the country, the TinCaps of the single-A Midwest League.

Over on the southwest side, meanwhile, there's a bonafide college football legend, Kevin Donley, who's brought two national titles to the University of St. Francis. Just east of downtown is Indiana Tech, home to immensely successful track-and-field and women's basketball and hockey programs. And up on the north side, there's Purdue-Fort Wayne, a D-I school whose men's and women's basketball programs are among the best in the Horizon League.

SportsRush gave big chunks of airtime to all of those, plus the Colts and Pacers and IU and Purdue football and basketball and the area high school kids. And now?

 Now 1380's owners, Federated Media, have pulled the plug on all that, without so much as a by-your-leave. Or without the courtesy of giving Rump and SportsRush a farewell broadcast, which any media company with an ounce of class or professionalism would have.

It's probably too much to say that makes Fed Media a total clown car, though there does seem to be a whole lot of greasepoint in its vicinity. Its suits would no doubt argue 1380 still carries area high school football and basketball, so it's unfair to say it has a disdain for local programming. And I suppose it's possible there was a heads-up to the public about the demise of SportsRush, and I just missed it.

Still doesn't change the fact SportsRush got bum Rushed. Still doesn't change the fact 1380 has lost at least one listener, if that at all matters to the clown car.

I mean, Fed Media is now giving us perpetual twit Colin Cowherd and Rome back-to-back. What's the marketing hook for that, Asshats In The Afternoon?

"I like it!" someone in the boardroom would no doubt say.

Yeesh.

Un-blessed relief

The best thing to happen at Augusta National yesterday was not Justin Rose's opening 65, which made him the first-round leader for a record fifth time. Nor was it 65-year-old Fred Couples shooting a 1-under 71, or poor Nick Dunlap -- who became the patron saint of weekend hackers everywhere by machete-ing his way through the pines and azaleas in 90 getting-his-money's-worth strokes.

No, sir. The best thing was Jose Luis Ballester, a 21-year-old amateur out of Spain and Arizona State.

And what he did was, he pissed on the Masters. 

OK, so not on the Masters, exactly. What he actually did was piss in Rae's Creek. 

And, OK, so not in Rae's Creek, exactly, but in one of the tributaries that feed into it.

He and playing partner Justin Thomas were on the 12th hole, and Thomas was fiddling around up on the green, so Ballester ... well, followed the dictates of nature. Seems the dictates were really dictatin', and so, not knowing where the closest restroom was, he wandered down to the stream and unzipped.

"I'm like, I really need to pee," Ballester said later. "Didn't really know where to go, and since JT had an issue on the green, I'm like, I'm going to sneak here in the river and probably people would not see me much."

First rule of the Masters, young man: They're not "people" here at Augusta. They're not even a "gallery." They're "patrons."

Second rule: Augusta is not "a golf course." Bite your tongue and say ten Our Fathers.

It's actually a house of worship, a mighty cathedral where great men of faith in fades, draws and hybrid irons come to genuflect. The azaleas! The pines! Tinkly piano music, Sarazen's Bridge and, yes, Rae's Creek!

Where some goofy college kid decided to take a whiz. 

Good lord, what's next? John Wayne playing patty fingers in the holy water with Maureen O'Hara?*

(*Random "The Quiet Man" reference)

Surely Jim Nantz swooned, when he heard about it. Surely the tinkly piano music faltered, turned discordant, and then became Elton John banging out "Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting." The azaleas wilted; the pines bowed their heads and wept; and. far away in Washington D.C., President and champion golfer Donald John "Legbreaker" Trump ordered an ICE hit squad to snatch Ballester, put a bag over his head and whisk him off to that country club in El Salvador.

Me?

I think Jose Luis Ballester is my new favorite golfer.

He had, after all, already tweaked the Masters' upturned nose by wearing a baseball cap with "Sun Devils" printed upside-down on the crown. Social media raked him for it, declaring such apparel inappropriate for THE MASTERS. And then ...

And then he drains the lizard in Rae's Creek. As if it were just another weekend round at Mudflap Hills Golf Club And Arcade, where the fairways are shredded wheat and the greens look less like bent grass than chewed grass.

Un-blessed relief, you might call that.

Also bit of comic relief, at a joint that could use some.

Homecoming

 Professional athletes are the most transient of creatures. Let's begin with that "well, duh" this morning.

Let's begin by saying today's pro is a '30s vagabond riding rails paved not with despair but with eight-or-nine figures, back-loaded and incentive-heavy. They move through the world dressed in Saint Laurent and Dolce & Gabbana, and their boxcar is a Gulfstream 5. They're Tom Joad with a numbered account in the Caymans and a portfolio thicker than a filet mignon.

All of which makes you think a mailing address would just be a mailing address to them. And also to the fans who understand how the game is played these days, and thus learn to keep their heartstrings to themselves.

However.

However, this does not explain what happened in Dallas last night.

Luka Doncic came home, is what happened. 

Came back to Dallas with his new team, the Los Angeles Lakers, and discovered that  transience is sometimes just a word in the dictionary. He's been gone two months now after spending 6 1/2 years in Big D, but damned if the place can't quit him.

A tribute video played on the big screen, and Luka's vision got all blurry. Mavericks fans waved "Welcome Home, Luka" signs. And, yeah, they filled the place with "Fire Nico!" chants, in honor of Nico Harrison, the head of basketball operations who shipped Luka off to the Lake Show.

Nico was there last night for all of it, hiding back in the shadows somewhere. And no doubt wondering when the hell the fan base was going to just let ... it ... go.

Sorry there, rough rider. But it wasn't gonna be last night.

Last night, there was that video, and then Luka swallowed the lump in his throat and gave the fans what they came for.  Dropped a cool 45-spot, tying his season high. The Lakers bounced the Mavs like a Superball, 112-97, and when Luka came out at the end of  his 45-point, eight-rebound, six-assist, four-steal night, the crowd rose and tore its throats out bellowing his name.

Luka! Luka! Luka! ...

Six-and-a-half years were in that cry. 

Pain and longing and memory were in it.

Love that transcended transience was in it; loyalty that defeated distance and the bloodless ritual of transaction.  And that, for one moment and one night, reminded us why the games of children matter so much to us.

Luka! Luka! Luka! ...